


All That Glitters

by aromantic-eight (rbmifan), patrexes



Series: OT3.5 [2]
Category: RWBY
Genre: (Not The Same Character FYI), Academy Era, Anempathic Character, Aromantic Character, Canon Disabled Character, Developing Friendships, M/M, Maybe the Real Big Bad Was the ADA Violations We Encountered Along the Way, Non-canon disabled character, Past Sexual Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, Rating May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-01-10 19:36:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18414491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rbmifan/pseuds/aromantic-eight, https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrexes/pseuds/patrexes
Summary: “I’m a student here like any other, regardless of any…” Aspin faltered.Previous accomplishments?Ozma suggested. That worked.“…Previous accomplishments,” he echoed.





	1. Prologue

The actual _act_ of running away was… anticlimactic.

In the months of planning beforehand, full of furtive CCT correspondence at the local library and heartstoppingly close calls, James had always imagined the process as something exciting and athletic: climbing out his tiny bedroom window in the middle of the night and darting down a carefully-charted maze of alleyways, hiding his face from memorized security cameras. It was all very dramatic. It had a theme song.

But it wasn’t like that at all. On the night he was set to leave, his mom was working overtime at the SDC processing plant and once his dad had taken his nightly sedative, blaring Grimm alert sirens wouldn’t wake him where he lay sprawled on the pullout. James opened and refolded the note he’d written three days ago one last time, pressed the well-worn creases with his thumbnail, and then set it down on the little kitchenette’s counter.

He let out a breath, staring at the little square of ruled notebook paper on the ruthlessly decluttered lino with a wry frown tugging at his lip. He moved the note over a few inches, leaning it up against the coffee maker so the neat cursive “Dear Mom & Dad” was at the clearest possible angle.

 _You’re being ridiculous_. James steeled himself, and then he walked out the front door, shutting it quietly behind him.

He’d planned for this, last week, when running away was finally, inescapably _real_. His passport had arrived ‘care of’ at Brick’s house, he had a letter reminding him of his upcoming trip in his CCT inbox, and the front door squealed like a mouse caught in a trap. James had oiled it the last time he did chores.

Locking the door behind him, backpack slung over one shoulder, it felt as ordinary as leaving for school on any other morning. Except he wasn’t coming back. Might never come back.

James felt something clench painfully in his chest at that thought, and he forced himself to get on with it before he could second guess himself again. He slipped his keycard beneath the mat, like he’d detailed in his note, and then headed to the shipyard. He busied himself with checking through his bag as he walked, mentally running through the things he would need again as if he hadn’t made up a list and checked it five times before he’d even begun to pack.

They’d understand. Eventually. When he’d shown them he could do it, that he was _fine_ , that he wasn’t going to crash and burn.

Atlas Academy had been wrong when they’d responded to his petition of their rejection letter with a polite suggestion to reapply next year, and a list of medical interventions his family could never afford that had ‘the potential to correct such impairments’. Huntsman training, they’d informed him—like he wasn’t already _intimately_ aware—was very physically taxing, and they’d left it at that, as though there wasn’t any need to say more.

Fuck it. Their loss. _Beacon_ hadn’t seem worried about it, once they’d seen his scores on the entrance examination.

⁂

Eurig had asked her _fifteen times_ now if she was sure she didn’t want to delay her flight to Beacon, most recently with a soft, concerned look and a reassuring hand on Glynda’s shoulder. There were at least half a dozen teary-eyed people watching, and Glynda felt like an exhibit in some roadside freakshow, or worse, like she was in a community theatre’s low-budget production of a play she hadn’t been given the script for. Probably the kind of edgy, experimental drama that _tried_ to make you feel bad, the kind that was too dangerous to perform outside of city limits.

Glynda didn’t know what she expected her to do _instead_. Maybe sob into Eurig’s shoulder like _she’d_ been doing with her stupid husband all month.

Eurig and Rudd were whole grown adults with jobs and kids and mortgages, and they were totally fucking useless. Eurig cried more than her _baby_ did. It made Glynda furious. If her brother and sister were _competent_ , or if they’d just _let_ Glynda take charge of things like she’d _wanted_ , then they could have gotten the funeral and everything done a week ago, at _least_. As it was, they probably wouldn’t even read the will until Glynda had already started her first semester at Beacon Academy.

Great job, guys.

Glynda shrugged out of her sister’s grip and stomped up the stairs without answering. It wasn’t nearly as loud as she wanted it to be, so she slammed her bedroom door to make up for it.

Gods, she didn’t have _time_ for any of this! Her flight was in two days, and she’d barely had the chance to pack yet because there were always _people_ over, people Glynda had never even _met_ before, because cards on the holidays absolutely did _not_ count. They’d all showed up on the doorstep after the accident with casseroles and asinine stories about something her parents had done, like, twenty years ago, and Glynda had bounced a nephew on her knee and tried to feign interest in whatever they were talking about. She hadn’t been impolite, she didn’t think, even though she was so bored and restless she wanted to claw her way out of her own skin.

They all still looked at her funny. The so-called ‘family friends’ and Rudd and Eurig, too. This morning, Glynda overheard Eurig confide to Rudd in hushed tones that she didn’t think things had really _sunk in_ for poor Glynda yet, and wasn’t it going to hit her hard when they finally did.

It had sunk in fine. It was at the bottom of the godsdamned ocean. Glynda’s parents were dead, and that sucked, and she wished they hadn’t, but _she_ actually _had_ a life left to worry about and she just didn’t see how putting it off was _helping_ anything.

She combed through her shelves and dresser for anything she might need the next four months, then she paused and started planning for the year. There was a uniform, wasn’t there? So she only really had to pack clothes for weekends in the city, but she could afford extra luggage allowance on the airship, and it was better to be prepared. As she was arranging things in her suitcase to make more room, she heard a knock at her door.

“Glynda?” It was Rudd. He cracked the door open, peeking his head in, but he stayed at the threshold. “Are you all right?”

She paused, staring down at the makeup mirror she was trying to maneuver in between shoes and tubes of powdered Dust, rolled-up clothes padding the irregular sides, then sighed. “I’m fine. Just packing.”

There was a pause, but she doubted she was lucky enough for him to just leave. Sure enough, after a few seconds there was a tentative, “Listen. I, uh, I know the wake was a lot. _Is_ a lot. I kind of wish everyone would leave, too.” There was an awkward little laugh from the door. “Do you need any help packing?”

“I’m fine.” Her tone was probably sharper than it needed to be, but she didn’t really feel like watching it, so whatever.

There was another pause. “Okay, then. If you’re sure.” Glynda didn’t say anything in reply. “Let me know if you need anything.” And then the door slipped shut, and she could hear movement behind it. He was gone.

Glynda sighed again. Two days. Then her siblings could take as long as they wanted to get over their parents. It wouldn’t be her problem anymore.

⁂

“—and, and the letter from Beacon came in the mailbox, and I read it! And it _said_ that they would be _honored_ to have me, um, have me attend, which means they think I’m gonna be a really good huntress after all. Missus Lily says that Hope doesn’t have _no idea_ what he’s talking about.” Diamond chewed at her lip, gaze falling to her lap. She flicked her thumbnail against the uneven hem of the longest strap of her backpack. The edge was ragged. She’d torn out some of the stitches with her fidgeting already, even though the backpack was brand new—only three months old—Moss’s new backpack that she’d given to Diamond just for Beacon, because “You’re gonna be representing the whole village, Di! You _gotta_ have new stuff.”

Diamond looked back up at the grave marker, a big, uneven rock twice the size of her head. In colorful but sun-faded paint, battered by the elements, her parents’ names were written in big, uneven capital letters above the painting Diamond had made of them smiling and clasping a scribbled mess of lines, because Diamond was only eleven when they died, and she hadn’t known how to draw hands yet.

Looking at it always made her smile. It was a good job, for a kid. She helped do crafts events for the kids, in the village hall, so she knew. Her Mom and Dad’s bright grins looked just like she remembered them—Missus Lily always said she showed their Auras even better than any of the paintings _professionals_ had done for the other graves in the village. Temperance said that was because she loved them so much, and they loved her so much, that they stayed with her after they died. Temperance was Missus Lily’s wife, and she was _really_ smart, so she knew stuff like that. “Missus Lily says too that you’re really proud of me. I hope that’s true. I want you to be proud of me.”

Diamond twisted the strap of her bag in her fingers tightly, frowning. She _did_ want them to be proud of her. But it was hard, sometimes, to imagine them being proud, even though she knew Missus Lily was right. Every time the Grimm came into the village when she was a kid, her Dad would send her off to hide in the cellar, and now she was going to become a Huntress, and all Huntresses _did_ was fight Grimm. What if her parents would have been too worried to be proud of her?

Diamond _hated_ when people worried about her. How was she supposed to worry about _them_ when they kept trying to worry about _her_ instead? Even her semblance was designed to protect people. And when she helped Saje and Dusk with the Grimm that showed up sometimes, getting too close to the borders, she knew, more than she knew anything else, that this was _right._

She shook off the sadness. It was silly, anyway. “I’m really prepared,” she told the gravestone earnestly. “I looked up and had a lot of videos on the CCT—they have _videos_ on there now, I bet you didn’t know that. They’ve got them on a bunch of different topics, and they’re really helpful. When I was packing up my bags for Beacon, I watched a video first about how to do it _super_ efficient.” She unzipped her backpack and carefully removed her toolkit, which she hadn’t added anything to since her new screwdriver in the spring so she set aside. Then she showed them how she had sorted and arranged her school supplies (also mostly new!) and her clothes, and how she’d tried to put her shield in with everything but shields can’t be packed efficiently. “And I also have a notebook full of easy recipes for dorms, in case I’m hungry in the middle of the night and the cafeteria people are sleeping so there’s no food there. Like this one—” she flipped the notebook open “—is an omelet with cheese and onion, and I made it two times for Missus Lily. And I’ve practiced doing different chores than I usually do, because I’ll have roommates and we’ll have the new chore system—”

She stopped short at a voice from behind her. “Diamond? Sweetheart, we’re going to be late.”

Oh, oops. Diamond hastily returned her things to their places in her backpack. More or less, anyway. The zipper took some work, but it still closed. She took a deep breath. “I’m gonna miss you a lot. I’ll visit when I can, I promise. And I’ll have all kinds of stories about Beacon and I’ll be on a team and tell you about my teammates!” She slung her bag over her shoulders, leaving the front clasp undone since she was going to take it off in the car again anyway, then gave the gravestone a hug, pressing her cheek against the painting of their smiling faces. “I love you,” she whispered.

“How were they?” said Missus Lily when Diamond climbed into the front seat beside her, wedging her backpack between her legs on the floor.

Diamond wiped quickly at her eyes. “They were really proud of me, just like you said.”

She looked, and Missus Lily was beaming at her. “I never doubted. There’s an awful lot to be proud of, after all.”

⁂

 _Remember,_ the calm voice in the back of his head said as he approached the Beacon campus. _Old Shrinewold is not nearly as intimidating as he seems to be._

“That’s the opposite of reassuring.”

 _My apologies._ He sounded amused. _Are you sure you don’t want me to take over?_

"Yes," said Aspin. He sighed. "No. I don’t know. I mean, he must be expecting you.”

 _He will be,_ Ozma agreed, _but I meant it when I told you that this is your life as well. He's going to have to get used to that._

It didn’t feel much like his life these days, Aspin thought as he stared up the clocktower. Even his accomplishments at combat school weren’t his own—not really. He pushed the thought out of his mind before Ozma could get _reassuring_ about that, too, and tried to look like he knew what he was doing as he turned and scanned the campus grounds.

 _To your left_ , he heard, and turned automatically to look. The man approaching was in a military dress uniform out of Aspin’s history textbook, the breast of his jacket weighted down with medals which did nothing to discourage the brisk spring in his step. His skin sagged a bit with age, and he looked… tired.

That hadn’t been his thought.

 _He always did take too much on his shoulders_ , Ozma reflected sadly. _I’m afraid I only ever added more._

The man stopped in front of him and gave him an assessing look. “Oziu—” He stopped suddenly. “No. Ah—”

“Ozpin, sir,” Aspin gave the name now listed on all his papers. It had been a compromise, and a symbol, of sorts, but Aspin still wished he had been able to keep the change hidden from his mother. In the rush of starting a new life, of sorts, he’d forgotten that the fame that new life came with meant her finding out from the CCT. His mother had—well. He’d found excuses to avoid dinner for a while. “We decided it was appropriate.”

The headmaster’s gaze sharpened. He was wondering who was in charge, Aspin realized with a rush of pride. Passing as a single individual was easy, when nobody had a reason to suspect you weren’t; but Headmaster Shrinewold had known Oziusudra, Warrior-King of Vale and savior of Remnant. They had fought side by side in the Great War and for decades afterwards, and though Ozma had never said it in so many words, Aspin had the impression he had been a close confidante. And yet, here and now, the headmaster wasn't _sure._

He gave the headmaster a polite smile and said nothing, wondering what conclusion he’d come to. He felt the press of Ozma’s own curiosity in the back of his mind, bright and amused.

The walk to the café Shrinewold had chosen was longer than Aspin had thought, and mostly uphill. Scenic, perhaps, but why couldn’t they have just met in his _office?_ A sharp pain burned down his leg, worsening with every step, and Aspin winced, hissing an inhale through his teeth.

The headmaster glanced back at him; the old man had taken a brisk pace, pulling ahead of Aspin almost immediately, and he didn’t even look to be out of breath. “Just a bit further,” he said.

Of course, who knew what _that_ meant to a man who looked ready to run a marathon. Aspin self-consciously unclasped his cane from its holster on his belt. The geriatric ought to be the one who couldn’t walk.

 _I’m sorry._ Ozma’s apology was as predictable as clockwork. _I could—_

 _I’m not letting you take over just so I don’t have to walk on_ your _legs,_ Aspin thought back at him, vehement.

He wasn’t sure at first if the headmaster had even noticed him pull out the cane, but when they arrived at the cafe Shrinewold directed him towards the nearest open table and pulled out a chair, proffering the seat to Aspin. He took it gratefully. “Please, order anything you’d like,” Shrinewold told Aspin as he took his own seat. He waited until the waitress had taken both their orders and the menu before he continued. “I've been watching you very carefully since you first came on my radar. I feel safe to say we all have. Clearly your—situation—is a bit irregular; how do we want to approach your enrollment, to make things… fair, for all involved?”

“Of course,” he said, matching Shrinewold’s tone. “I’m a student here like any other, regardless of any…” Aspin faltered.

 _Previous accomplishments?_ Ozma suggested. That worked.

“…Previous accomplishments,” he echoed. “I wouldn’t dream of being treated any differently.”

“Of course, of course. Even the most talented of us can still learn things. Then, with an odd weight to the words, the headmaster added, “Rest assured, here at Beacon you will be treated _precisely_ the same as everyone else.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If RT didn't want Oz to be disabled, they shouldn't have given him a cane. As usual for this series, and for everything we write in this fandom, Oz has a psychosomatic limp thanks to Salem's tender loving care, and James has a degenerative neuromuscular condition. 
> 
> Fanon has the Great King’s name as Ozymandias, who’s technically Rameses II but is much more well-known from the Shelley poem, the tone of which we felt was somewhat inappropriate for an Oz incarnation. Instead, we’ve used Ziusudra, the king and protagonist of the Sumerian deluge myth, whose devotion to the gods led them to give him immortality [[x](http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.7.4#)].
> 
> This series is endgame James/Oz/Qrow, but Qrow will not be appearing in this fic. He is four years old.


	2. Into the Woods, Pt 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter (and much of the fic) contains homophobia and transphobia, and referenced abuse. Not relevant yet, but very good for you to be keeping in mind, is the tagged warnings for PTSD and past sexual abuse. 
> 
> Additionally, disability is a major theme in this fic, and you can expect ableism from both POV and non-POV characters in this chapter and throughout. The POV characters will not always espouse healthy or kind perspectives.
> 
> Special thanks to @noahfronsenburg for helping out with combat scenes in this and the next chapter.

Irving was three inches shorter than Aspin, all wide smiles and graceful parries and larger than life presence. He was the first person who’d ever told Aspin he looked good with nail polish on. _You’re hotter than the desert outside, you know that?_ He’d slipped a bottle into Aspin’s hands before the quarter-finals in a combat school in Vacuo, pushing him against a wall as he stole a kiss and Aspin couldn’t stop smiling as he tried to return it.

Irving laughed, his breath puffing on Aspin’s face, and tilted his head so he could nip Aspin’s lower lip, and Aspin’s breath caught in his throat. He was too hot, Irving pressed up against him, and when he brought his hands up to cup Irving’s head Irving wrapped his hands around Aspin’s forearms gently. Irving moved down to start kissing at his neck. The hands around Aspin’s arms got tighter, and he could feel the pinprick sensation of nails digging into his skin and the scrape of teeth on his neck. A wave of nausea rolled through him.

“You don’t talk to me, you’re never home anymore. I have to find out you’ve been doing… _this_ from _Cindy_ , who read it in a _magazine_ _!”_ Aspin turned, the hands on his arms gone now, to see his mother was still holding it, crumpled in a fist—a lucky, damning paparazzi shot on the cover. She waved it at him again. “Who is this? What is on your _nails_ —your _eyes_ _?_ All you’d need is a slutty little black dress and you’d look like a girl! Is that what this is? Are you trying to be a _girl_ now? You’re a public figure, Aspin. Everything you do in public sets an example for people. For _children_. And you go around _degrading_ yourself in front of a camera?”

It wasn’t worth trying to correct the name. “I’m not—I’m just trying to be myself,” he said desperately. Then, half to himself, he muttered, “And nobody is really making a big deal out of it except you.” Aspin pressed his hand flat to the kitchen table so it would stop shaking. He’d carefully scrubbed the polish from his fingers on the trip home. Maybe he shouldn’t have bothered.

“It was on the _front page_ of the newspaper today. These _freaks_ ,” his mother’s voice filled the word with a wealth of fury and disgust, “would be happy to tear apart every good family in this city, and if you don’t watch yourself they’ll make you a figurehead for their crusade. You’re going to drag the name of this entire family through the mud, is that what you want?”

There was a miserable knot of guilt in the pit of his stomach. “I’m sorry,” he managed. He balled his hand into a fist on the table, fingers scraping against the odd purple crystal that had threaded itself through the old, cracked wood that she’d probably never bothered replacing, even after all these centuries. “I shouldn’t have—”

“You’re right,” said his mother, kindly, but firmly. “You shouldn’t have. But I know you won’t act out like this again, will you dear?”

Out of the kitchen window, the sky was dark, and the land was dead. “No,” he choked out. “No.”

He was still staring out the window when he felt his mother step forward. She wrapped her arms around him in a hug, and Aspin knew he was supposed to be relaxing into it but he couldn’t. He’d never really been good with hugs. He never knew where to put his hands. When he hadn’t moved for several seconds, he felt her hands shift, nails pricking shoulder warningly, and he was suddenly acutely aware that she could hold him in place if he tried to move. As soon as he’d had that thought, he wanted to do nothing else. His skin crawled where she touched it, his heart racing, and he had to get _away_ , had to get out before she—

He chided himself and forced himself to relax into her embrace. This was ridiculous. His mother wouldn’t hurt him. She yelled, but she’d never _hurt_ him, not really.

 _Yet_. Ozma’s voice was faint, and full of some emotion Aspin couldn’t place.

His hands had left a smear of blood where they’d brushed against her dress, and there was a searing, aching pain in his legs.

“See, you’re already starting to come around,” his mother was saying, but she didn’t sound quite right. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

⁂

Aspin woke up gasping, skin clammy with sweat. There was something wrapped around him, trapping his limbs, and the material rustled as he tried to free himself, to sit up, to—

Oh. It was just his sleeping bag.

He forced himself to stop. Focused on the quiet snoring of the student sleeping next to him and the hush of the dark hall rather than the pain in his legs. He counted as he breathed in until he could take slow, steady breaths. Fuck. Fuck.

It didn’t seem like anyone else was awake, so at least he hadn’t cried out in his sleep—and neither had Ozma.

Ozma’s nightmares were always fuzzy, half-remembered affairs that left them both exhausted and shaking, throat sore from screaming. They were… _unsettling_ , in a way that Aspin couldn’t really explain—something about them making his own nightmares seem pedestrian in comparison. Usually.

Aspin frowned as he unzipped his sleeping bag and pushed himself to a sitting position, remembering the blood on his hands, the sharp nails digging into his skin. His mother kept her nails trimmed ruthlessly short, and that _fear_ …

He only ever felt Ozma afraid like _that_ when he was thinking of whoever owned those nails.

(Could feel a trace of that fear even now, at the _idea_ of her.)

Aspin tried to avoid thinking about the woman further as he collected his things, resigned to being awake for the day, but his leg burned with every step to the locker room to get dressed. He got flashes of her, sometimes: those nails, a coaxing voice, impossibly red eyes. Fire and screams and his legs, crushed.

Whoever she was, Ozma never talked about her, not even when Aspin asked. He never talked much at all, after those dreams. He'd go quiet, sometimes pushing a feeling or an image through, sometimes disappearing entirely, for hours or days. Aspin got the feeling he shouldn't push his luck.

Aspin collected his backpack and made his way to the near-empty cafeteria hall after he was dressed, pouring hot water into a mug and carrying it over to the cornermost table. He rested his cane against the side of the table, then hopped up onto it, resting his boots on the bench seat.

“Anybody home?” he asked idly.

Ozma didn’t answer. Aspin sighed and reached into his backpack, retrieving two foil packets from one of its sections and a small canvas pencil case from another. He set the bag in his lap and tore off the tops of both packets at once, pouring the powdered contents into his mug of hot water. At least he wouldn’t be getting comments on his meal choices today, he thought, stirring the hot chocolate and meal replacement together. Ozma hated the clinging, chalky aftertaste and the lack of recognizable _food_ involved, and Aspin didn’t even have milk right now to make it taste _good_. But Ozma was also the reason Aspin spent half his time being flung between cities and tournaments, and why he woke up with a roiling stomach more days than not. So he could stuff it, honestly.

He took a sip, and the taste was a welcome bit of familiarity in Beacon’s huge cafeteria. It was kind of sad, how much better it made him feel.

Setting the mug beside him, he unzipped the bag and pushed aside a pen and old eraser to take out his small collection of makeup—an eyeliner marker, a few tubes of thin, shimmery lip gloss, a bottle of metallic green nail polish, and a compact that opened to a mirror and a half dozen shades of eyeshadow he hadn’t yet been brave enough to actually try _wearing_. Aspin could hear his mother’s voice in his head, _is that what this is? Are you trying to be a girl now?_

Aspin shook himself, then popped open the compact with his thumb and bit off the cap of his eyeliner marker. His mother wasn’t here, and neither was the paparazzi. Nobody _cared._

He still didn’t put on any eyeshadow.

⁂

Glynda wouldn’t say things had gotten _out of hand_. Not _really_.

Sure, okay, she’d run straight into the biggest Grimm she’d ever seen; not so much house-sized as small apartment building-sized, so big that it blocked out the sun standing over her. Sure, the rocks she tossed at it may as well have been pebbles she was flicking at a crush’s window like she was in some dumb teen film, for all the damage they did (Glynda wasn’t actually sure if the Grimm had even _noticed_ them). Sure, she had no idea what her strategy was going to be, or what the horse-like Grimm even _was_ , or what it could do.

But she still had her Aura, she had two small vials of Dust left in her pack for an emergency, and horses—even giant, terrifying, soulless horses made out of every negative human thought and impulse—couldn’t climb trees.

So, really, things weren’t so bad. This was going to be a challenge, of course, but facing challenges is why she’d wanted to go to Beacon Academy in the first place. High in the branches, she was out of the Grimm’s reach. She just had to get her heart rate down, think of a plan, and she’d come out of this victorious.

First things first, she needed to get her hair out of her face.

When she’d first been catapulted into the forest, she’d tried to fix up her loose, newly twig-filled bun, and her original hair tie had snapped. The backup she kept on her wrist put up a noble effort, but it had been lost twenty minutes ago to an ursa’s sharp claws, and fighting a gigantic, monstrous horse with her hair in her mouth _sucked_.

She considered her options. She didn’t have a knife, so cutting off the hem of her midiskirt wouldn’t exactly be feasible. Why _didn’t_ she have a knife, actually? She should add one to her pack, after she got out of this.

What Glynda _did_ have was hose. She toed off one shoe and dug her nails into her hose below her knee, easily tearing the thin fabric. She couldn’t help imagining, a little spitefully, her sister’s face if she’d been here now. Her sister may have forgotten that snide little remark she’d made three years ago— _Panty hose? You look like you're headed to bingo at the senior’s center_ —but _Glynda_ hadn’t.

Shoving sticky blonde strands out of her face, she pulled her hair up into a high ponytail and knotted the strip of hose around it, then slipped her shoe back onto her bare foot. Below her, the tree wobbled, as it had been since the horse had found her. It screamed. “Yeah,” Glynda said. “You and me both.”

It kicked the trunk again and it juddered, from root to canopy, and she hooked her knees tighter over the branch beneath her, looked down.

Angry red eyes stared up at her. Another kick, another wobble. Another kick.

As another kick was accompanied by a deeply unreassuring crunching noise from beneath, the trunk started to tumble. Glynda shoved her crop between her teeth, freeing up her hands, and shifted so she was balancing, the arches of her heels hooked around the top of the branch, and waited for the final blow to the structural integrity of the tree.

This time, the _crunch_ was loud enough that Glynda could _feel_ the rumble of the sound, and the tree trunk went down beneath her like a sinking ship. Already prepared for it, she corrected, shifting around the branch as gravity took a moment to take hold, so that as soon as the momentum of falling caught her, she let it lift her and threw herself backward from the trunk, anchoring her telekinesis with that same momentum.

Glynda was in freefall, and right below her—a glance downward confirming the distance—was a pretty sizable stack of rocks.

She could work with that.

Pulling her crop out of her mouth, Glynda corrected so she was upright, and took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and _pulled_. With the momentum of falling, it wasn’t too hard to channel that sudden reduction in gravity straight into something else, _reverse_ it, rather than coming up with a whole new energy source.

Screaming—unnecessary, but hey, it helped the horse, it helped her too—Glynda cut her momentum completely. The g-force made her entire head _pound_ as her soft tissue crashed abruptly to a halt and she temporarily lost her vision, her teeth rattling in her skull, as the stones took all of that momentum instead.

They shot out of the ground just the same as they would have with Dust blasting them free, and catapulted through the air. The largest was house-sized and the smallest was still a solid double her size and weight. They rocketed forwards, clustered together, and Glynda grinned, still frozen in the half-second it took for gravity to reorient itself without momentum, as the first two struck the horse, still trying to catch up to her, in the shoulder. The next four crashed into its sternum, tangling in its knees, tripping it up, and it almost faceplanted into the dirt. The next couple hit its legs more, downing it partway, with its forehead squarely as the direct target of—

The largest boulder.

It smashed into the Grimm’s narrow forehead at full speed, square between its eyes, and the resulting impact was enough to shatter the stone to dust, exploding in midair. The Grimm’s shriek of pain was abruptly cut off by the impact, and Glynda instantly closed her eyes and covered her nose. Glynda turned her face to protect her eyes from the shards, slivers of rock peppering her like tiny arrows. Her shirtsleeve shredded over her elbow and wrist, the remains of her hose across her calves, and a dozen tiny hairline cuts peppered her face, stinging.

Glynda reopened her eyes, still looking away from the impact site, to make sure she was going to hit the ground safely. “There’s no way that fucking horse is getting back up,” she muttered under her breath, and glanced back forwards.

Directly into red eyes that were almost as big as she was. A hot gush of breath made her skirt fly upwards.

Glynda shrieked.

The Grimm shrieked.

The Grimm headbutted Glynda like she was that rock. _Unlike_ that rock, Glynda had her Aura, and thus was not instantly pulverized into shards of Glynda. However, the pain was sudden—intense, extreme—and she screamed again, her vision whiting out.

Disoriented, all she could tell for a moment was that she was shooting backwards with _even more momentum,_ tree trunks shattering beneath her like she was a bullet. None of them stopped her, wood splintering against the onslaught of her spine, the knit of her vest catching and tearing too. Desperately, gasping for breath, she tried to open her eyes, to right herself, to figure out where she was before she went over a cliff.

Luckily, something stopped her.

Unluckily, that something was a stone wall.

Glynda’s Aura shattered in much the same way that her mother’s favorite set of wine glasses had on her fifteenth birthday, when Glynda had been practicing levitating them, been startled by the door closing, and dropped all of them.

Completely.

Glynda’s eyes flew open, coughing spittle and bits of bile, and she hit the ground—fortunately, not from a significant height—and lay there, unmoving.

Between her percussion-gunfire heartbeats her gasping breaths sounded like someone trying to pump bellows. She couldn’t see anything but colors and light for a moment, everything shut down except _pain pain pain_ and _move move move_ , and neither one of those things were anything she could fix. Her hearing came back first, and there was the sound of someone shouting words she couldn’t quite clearly make out past the ringing in her ears, footsteps in the undergrowth getting closer. The distinctive _thwang_ of someone hitting a horse the size of an apartment complex in the nose with a blunt metal object.

The footsteps raced over and knees hit the ground at the edge of where Glynda could see. One of the other students, must be. Glynda felt a wave of embarrassment—this was _not_ how she wanted to meet her future classmates. That sucked. She tried to say _thank you_ but all that came out when she spoke was a single, breathless, “ _Heourghn,_ ” which was not either of those words at all, so she tried again, and this time managed “Thyough,” which was sort of closer to it.

“Is your partner okay?” her savior asked.

“Don’t have one yet,” Glynda managed, trying to shake off her daze. Hands fumbled near her face, and she belatedly realized that the reason she couldn’t see anything was her glasses had fallen off. The other student was a short girl with dark skin and wide-set, almond shaped eyes, and she was wearing a sequined top that flashed in the sunlight in a way that made Glynda dizzy. She squeezed her eyes shut, and then turned to find her glasses on the ground beside her. The right arm jabbed her ear when she put them on and the frame was definitely crooked, but they were on. Glynda blinked, groaning when she realized the right lens was mostly shattered. The left was intact, so she could at least _sort_ of see.

“Wow,” the girl said, without a trace of sarcasm in her voice. “You didn’t waited at _all_ to get yourself in trouble. You’re lucky I found you, then! I’m Diamond.” She offered a hand. “Are you hurt bad?”

Glynda ignored the proffered hand, pretty sure she’d pass out if she tried to sit up right now anyway, and gave the newcomer her most scathing look, like, what are you, a total dumbass? There was something  _off_ about her, too. She wasn’t talking right, like she had to force out half the syllables. Oh, _shit_. “Yeah,” she said shortly, and then, when the girl leaning over her didn’t seem to have gotten the hint already, “Could I get some space?”

Diamond pulled back immediately. “Can you—” Diamond cut herself off with a wince, and Glynda looked past her to see that she’d used what must have been her Semblance to throw a glowing bubble of a forcefield up over the both of them. Just outside, the horse shrieked again, and brought its giant hooves straight down on top of them. If the bubble hadn’t been there, it’d have crushed them both, but as it was, it held firm. For now, anyway. “Can you run?”

“I can’t even _stand_.” The headmaster had said _you won’t always have the luxury of fighting alongside friends_ , but Glynda hadn’t thought she’d end up babysitting some girl with special needs.

The horse brought its hooves down on them again, and Diamond’s glimmering forcefield held fast.

Okay, maybe ‘babysitting’ was a little uncharitable. _This is Beacon Academy,_ Glynda reminded herself. _If Diamond got in, she must be pretty incredible._

And wasn’t _that_ humiliating? Glynda had fucked up so bad she had to get saved by some—

She stopped herself. The least she could do was give Diamond a _chance_. Especially since—and she inwardly winced as she realized—fuck, they were _partners_ now, weren’t they? “My Aura’s out too,” she said, and managed to get herself up onto one elbow, her muscles trembling with the strain. “Like, _really_ out.” Current Aura reserves: _jack_ and _shit_.

Diamond nodded and bit her lip. “There’s always a solution,” she told Glynda seriously, “We just need to stay calm and think of the solution and we’ll have a plan.” Like they were sitting in a classroom completing a scenario worksheet for midterms. _Yolanda is hiding under a table with Mel, who’s lost her Aura and can’t sit up. There’s an ursa right outside, and they have one vial of burn Dust. What should they do?_

“This isn’t _combat sch—”_ Glynda began scathingly, and stopped. She _did_ have a vial of burn Dust. More than one. Say what you would about her mom, she had a point about _always wear your fanny pack in front_ , and Glynda undid the buckle on her bag, glad it hadn’t been behind her. If it had, the entire inside would have been pulverized. Also, not unrelatedly, so would Glynda, from when the Dust had all mixed during her crash-landing and exploded instantly. Instead, they were rattled, but nothing was broken, and she fumbled around until she had pulled every single cartridge out.

Squinting out her good eye, Glynda counted four cartridges of burn Dust, two of gravity, and one—surprisingly unexpected—stick of wind Dust. “How much bigger can you make the shield?” Glynda asked, still trembling, but an idea coming to mind. “Without it buckling instantly?”

Diamond was scanning the area, brow furrowed in concentration, as the horse Grimm pounded into the shield one last time and then… stopped. It tossed its head and gave a dissonant whinny, and then began to back away. Okay. _That_ wasn’t good. “Probably that big?” Diamond said, gesturing towards a nearby fallen log, about twenty feet away from them. “I can’t hold it for very long,” she warned. The horse had reached the edge of the clearing and was pawing at the ground, staring at them intently.

“That’s all right,” said Glynda. She took a deep breath, rolling to sit up, and then she did that dumb thing they told you to never, ever do when you handled Dust, and shoved three cartridges of burn Dust between her teeth. Their knees bumped together.

“What are you doing?”

Glynda grinned as the bubble started to expand, now far enough out that she could climb, shakily, to her feet. “Arson.” She said it around her mouthful, then paused. “Or murder. One or the other. Hopefully.”

Diamond grinned back, her eyes gleaming as her bubble grew around them. “Oh, _rad!”_

The horse tossed its head again and started to charge, Diamond’s Semblance causing the air to shimmer between them, and Glynda felt a familiar rush of anticipation. She _had_ this. _They_ had this, and they were going to kick ass.

Maybe this partnership would work out okay after all.


	3. Into the Woods, Pt 2

James had kind of expected this trial to be harder, if he was being totally honest. The forest gave him an advantage in a way, providing plenty of cover for him to make his attacks from, as long as he didn’t let them get the drop on him. Grimm didn’t really aim as well through trees and shrubs as James. For all the dire warnings about what they’d come up against in the forest, James was starting to suspect the professors were going easy on them. Or maybe he’d just been lucky.

Of course, he’d no sooner thought that than begun to hear the faint sound of echoing shouts—the thud of bodies hitting the ground. James paused, putting out a hand against the half-shredded bark of a nearby tree as he strained to hear the commotion better, place the sound in his mental geography. He checked the strap on his left leg’s orthosis in the meantime—the velcro had a habit of catching random debris to come undone easier, and taking a calm moment to make sure it was aligned and fastened correctly was a hell of a lot better than being left to try and fix it in the middle of a fight, _after_ it had come undone. That was how people died.

The battle was northwest of him, not far, and James expected it was likely in whatever clearing had allowed just _slightly_ more light to filter through the canopy to him from that direction. He wondered which of the other students it was—he couldn’t hear gunshots, which might have suggested melee, or it might just have just suggested someone who’d run out of bullets. Neither possibility told him anything useful. Most of the students at Beacon were from Vale, and the only ones James recognized were the few he’d seen on CCT; he knew a few of the faces in the cafeteria that morning from the last Juniors’ World Tournament.

(And wasn’t _that_ amazing? He was in the same classes with some of the most talented fighters of his generation. James only hoped he could even come close to measuring up.)

James crept towards the noise as he tried to guess the fighting style. There were still no gunshots from the clearing, but there also wasn’t any _screaming_. The student was a melee fighter, then, or competent enough of one to not die once they’d lost their weapon. If the student was occupied with their fight, he might be able to get a read on them before being noticed—he hadn’t forgotten the headmaster’s inexplicable partner assignment conventions. A melee combatant would be the perfect partner in tandem with his own skillset, he thought.

He found some low brush in a copse at the edge of the clearly, a snarl of half-dead bushes he could crouch behind to give himself a mostly unobscured view of the other student’s battle while remaining out of sight himself.

James forced himself not to flinch when a Beowolf went flying past him to land heavily against an adjacent tree, letting out a breath and keeping his emotions level. He was a spectator here—nothing more. He let the hand that had dropped to his holster fall instead to the ground, keeping his balance steady as the Beowolf righted itself.

His palm sunk a full inch into wet muck. James grimaced. The Beowolf snarled, its eyes glancing briefly toward James before turning back toward its quarry. James followed its gaze to see a _very_ familiar silver-haired figure spin on one foot to keep all of his opponents in sight, stance relaxed, looking for all the world like this was a warm-up duel.

Gods. Only Ozpin Diggs could go toe to toe with four different Beowolves like it was _practice_. He hardly even looked like he was working up a sweat.

No; James took that back. He was _definitely_ working up a sweat, because he swiped the back of his hand across his forehead before tucking damp, clumping hair behind his ear only to have it immediately fall back into his eyes. “It’s _just_ starting to grow back,” Ozpin was telling himself irritably in Mantelais, just loud enough James was able to catch it. “Give it time.” In the middle of this, he turned on his heel and kicked one of the Grimm in its knee, felling the monster. He swung his cane backwards so that it came back around and fell into his hands like he was holding a rifle, and if James were watching _anyone else_ fight, it would have turned out to be one, too. But Ozpin’s cane was just that, and he levelled the tip of the cane at the Beowolf before jamming it into the Grimm’s eye socket.

The blunt tip went all the way out the other side before the defeated Grimm dissolved.

That left three of them. Ozpin blocked the next one with an upraised elbow and spun around, taking its leg out from beneath it so it crashed onto its back on the forest floor. He hopped over it, kicking it in the gut as he went, and ducked under the outstretched claw of the third, smoothly spinning and taking it out at the knee too, so two Grimm were down—not _dead_ , but not currently posing any issue—and he was only left with the fourth one.

It was the biggest of them all, almost double the size of the others, and Ozpin adjusted his dark glasses, dragged his fingers through his hair, tried (failed) again to push it out of his face. “Well, what about _bobby pins_ , then?” he asked nobody, and then caught the Beowolf’s fist as it punched at him. He held its fist, and grimaced as he pushed back, and then exerted his full strength. The Beowolf froze, and then went flying backwards forty feet. Ozpin sighed and shook out his hand, turned so he was half in profile as the sun caught his hair, and James was struck by the fact that, as it turned out, he was as pretty in real life as he was on the cover of a gossip magazine. Go figure.

The two Grimm were still left, and they were starting to pick themselves back up. Ozpin spun his cane idly in one hand, his back to James once more. “Feel free to pitch in,” he said suddenly, _loudly_ , and this time in accented Valisc, cleanly and sharply enunciated. “This _is_ meant to be a partnership, after all.”

“We haven’t actually locked eyes yet,” James shot back in his—both their—native Mantelais, without thinking. Equally without thinking, he pulled his pistol from its holster on his belt, balanced the base of the stock against his palm, raised the barrel. Fired.

He didn’t bother trying to aim. At this distance, he’d be a better shot without trying; it’d just be a waste of time. The first Grimm went down with a hole square between its eyes. He let his Semblance guide the movement of his arm, and a moment later the second Grimm’s jaw was gone. The rest of its body followed suit, scattering on the breeze.

Ozpin pushed his tinted glasses up into his hairline. He blinked. He turned to look at James.

Ozpin Diggs, four-time winner of the Mistral Regional Tournament and three-time winner of both the Juniors’ World Tournament and the Juniors’ Vytal Combat Championship, the face on one of James’ favorite cards in the newest _Heroes of Remnant_ ‘Young Blood’ booster pack, made eye contact with him.

Oh, _gods_.

James slid out from behind the bushes, dusted dirt off of his knees with the dry backs of his hands and stood. He was taller than Ozpin, just slightly, and he rubbed the back of his neck.

He _hadn’t_ wiped off his palm. Mud smeared on his skin, and clumps of dirt went straight down the collar of his shirt. He immediately grimaced and untucked it, shaking sod out the bottom of it and over the waistband of his pants as he came over to Ozpin. “I—sorry. I didn’t want to, you know, kill steal. It looked like you had them pretty much handled.” What were you even supposed to say when you met a celebrity you also had to be partners with for the next four years? _Don’t be weird._ “You’re really good,” he offered, unnecessarily.

Ozpin stared at him for a long second, seeming almost dazed, then he blinked and smiled, a dazzling, reflexive thing. Up this close, James noticed it didn’t actually reach his eyes. “Thank you,” he said, also unnecessarily, because he must get this _all the time_. “So were you.”

James smiled back. “Um,” he said, and then, “Oh. My name’s James. James Ironwood. I’d shake your hand, but—” He waved his muck-covered hand.

“Think nothing of it,” Ozpin replied good-naturedly with a wave of his hand, leaning on his cane with the other. “It’s lovely to meet you, James.” He didn’t introduce himself, but then, it wasn’t exactly like he _needed_ to.

⁂

By the time they reached the low, crumbling ruins of some old fort they’d managed to exchange a full ten more words. On a screen, Ozpin was impeccably smooth, but the real Ozpin seemed more reticent, a small, focused frown on his face as he grimly pushed forward, the tip of his cane sinking into the mud with every step. James found himself reluctant to break the silence, even though he itched to fill it with _something_.

What was he supposed to _say_? With anybody else, he could ask mild, personal questions, get to know them a little better. _Which combat school did you go to? Your weapon’s cool, what does it do? What’s your Semblance?_

But everybody already _knew_ Ozpin Diggs graduated from Sanctum Academy and his cane was just a cane—nigh-unbreakable, to be sure, but hiding no special abilities. And his Semblance? _Nobody_ knew that, and James felt sure Ozpin wouldn’t tell him if he asked. His _Heroes of Remnant_ card, where it should have explained the special ability in gameplay terms, read “ _Enhanced Constitution._ Never engaging his Semblance means there’s little to tax his Aura.” James wasn’t sure if that was actually true, or if they just used that explanation to balance it against the other cards. His Semblance might just be one of those subtle, quiet things people didn’t notice unless you pointed it out, like James’ own uncannily good aim. Not everyone could, like, make doubles of themselves, or turn invisible.

Ozpin veered to one side as they approached the ruin, heading for one of the many large rocks scattered around the remains of the walls, as far from the loose knot of four students chatting on the other side as possible. He sat down with a relieved sigh, his eyes closing briefly. James stopped in front of him and shifted restlessly, one hand brushing the top of his gun as he scanned the clearing.

“So, you grew up in Argus?” James asked finally, when the silence ran too long. He had to say _something_.

Could have been something less stupid, though. “I did,” Ozpin said, and James had never even heard that verb ending in real life before. Argive Mantelais was a _weird_ dialect, totally unmistakable, practically more like the northern Mistrali languages it was surrounded by than proper Mantelais. “Are you from Mantle?”

James bit back a wince. He hadn’t thought it was that apparent. “My parents are,” he admitted. “We moved to Atlas when I was a kid.”

Ozpin nodded. “My father was from Mantle.” This, James hadn’t actually known already, and something about the fact that Ozpin Diggs had shared personal information with him, something that wasn’t in a biography he could find on the CCT, made James flush with warmth. Maybe he wasn’t screwing this up too badly, after all. Ozpin adjusted his glasses. He was watching James with an odd little smile on his face—amusement? He gestured at the ruins around them. “Do you know what this place is?”

James followed his hand, distracted by the question. “A ruin,” he said, but that was obvious. His textbooks had mostly only talked about Beacon itself, rather than any of the buildings surrounding it. He scanned the walls, trying to find a clue as to its original purpose. A lookout tower, maybe?

“It was a temple, once,” Ozpin filled in when he failed to continue. “To the gods of Vale before the Great War.”

 _That_ James knew. Vale had been a theocratic monarchy, of sorts. “Azanma and Zaalen,” he supplied. Husband and wife, and the royal couple were meant to be their mortal aspects, or something.

Ozpin visibly winced at the names, or more likely, at a shooting pain that’d happened as James said the names. “Yes,” he said. He nodded up at the highest point of the wall, where the lower half of a great stone skylight frame was still intact. “It would have been an impressive sight when it still stood. The temples were built oriented west, with the eastern wall higher so that the skylight was at an angle. It contained the symbol of Zaalen, ever-present in the heavens.” There were thick crossbars in the skylight, an X shape that still remained though the panes of glass were long gone. “When the sun passed overhead at noon, the symbol’s shadow would begin to creep up the eastern wall, the shape distorting until it became her husband’s symbol, before disappearing again when the sun dipped below the horizon.”

James stared up at the remains of the ceiling, trying to visualize the effect. It was clever, he had to admit. He wondered who had hit on how to manipulate the light like that. “Seems kind of lopsided,” he mused. “It’s a cool idea, but Azanma’s symbol would only be there for an hour or two, right?” They probably had symbols of both gods all over the temple, so maybe it hadn’t mattered much.

“A common belief, as I understand it, is that Azanma travelled throughout Remnant with the day, then returned to Zaalen in the heavens. The ephemeral symbol’s appearance and climb up the wall represented his reunion with his wife. I couldn’t tell you,” Ozpin added, an odd expression on his face, “the significance of Azanma’s symbol being the misshapen shadow of Zaalen’s own. Perhaps they began as two aspects of a single godhead. Perhaps Azanma was simply the lesser of the two.”

“That’s really interesting,” said James honestly. He didn’t know that anyone from Argus knew that kind of stuff about Vale’s gods. _James_ sure hadn’t learned any of that in school.

He glanced toward the inside of the ruin at the sound of a clatter and a curse. Two other tired-looking students who’d come in while they were talking were standing beside one of the little columns arranged along the walls, joining the others. The taller of the two girls, a blonde in a muddy purple skirt, gravel and bark stuck in her sweater, bent down to find the chess piece she’d dropped. The two of them, plus Ozpin and James, plus the ones who’d been there already when they’d arrived, and it was starting to get crowded. “We should probably grab a relic,” James said.

“Oh,” said Ozpin, unbothered. “Right! Just, ah, pick whichever you like.” He gave a vague wave of his hand, and went back to scraping dried mud out of the grooves of his cane tip.

James shrugged and wandered over to the nearest column, just in time to catch the girl who’d dropped the chess piece say, in what she clearly thought was a whisper, “‘Course the Atlesians’ve found each other.”

“Dude,” the student behind her hissed, “that’s _Ozpin Diggs_. He’s not _Atlesian_.” He said it like she may as well have used a slur.

“Do you think he’d do an autograph?” another of their little group asked.

James checked the columns closest to him and Ozpin, finding them empty. There were some left next to the gossiping students, though. James glanced back toward Ozpin, who seemed oblivious to the exchange, scraping at his cane and muttering inaudibly to himself, and then walked right up to them and gave them an awkward, hopefully polite smile before he grabbed a bishop and turned on his heel.

Living in Vale was going to be… interesting.

⁂

After everything in the forest, the ceremony afterward was… long. They let everybody change into clean clothes first, at least, and there was only one speech, but the headmaster had been talking for ages and _ages_ about the importance of the school because of the Great War, and the expectations they had to upkeep because they were huntsmen and huntresses, and a lot of stuff about honor and loyalty, and Diamond hadn’t expected being at Beacon to feel so much like the vegetable contest awards ceremony back home. She bounced on her feet and tried not to fidget too obviously, and counted down the other students as they (finally!) started being called up, trying to guess who her teammates would be.

“Diamond Bogg—” Her head shot up at her name. Yes! “—Ozpin Diggs—” _Oh_. “James Ironwood, and Glynda Goodwitch.” Diamond had already grabbed Glynda’s hand to pull her to the stage with her.

“We saw them at the relics,” she told Glynda on the way.

Glynda sighed. “So we did.”

Then they were on stage, and Diamond took her place beside her new teammates proudly, lining up like the other teams had done.

“The four of you retrieved the white bishop pieces, and will now work together as team GJOD, led by Glynda Goodwitch.” Headmaster Shrinewold said the team name like ‘gee-owed’. Diamond wasn’t sure where the J had gone, and said as much.

“It can be a vowel sometimes,” Ozpin murmured into her ear. He shifted his grip on his cane. “Congratulations, Miss Goodwitch,” he offered.

James was a dark-haired boy dressed up almost all white, and he gave Diamond and Glynda both a smile. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“So you _do_ speak Valisc,” Glynda commented as she took the hand he offered, and she finally wasn’t frowning. That was a good sign, Diamond decided.

This was going to be a good team.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got through two whole chapters before we even mentioned religion and language! That's a new record, honestly. 
> 
> Mantelais is, of course, fantasy French. Argive Mantelais is Cajun French, and straddles the line between dialect and creole. They speak fantasy French because in _Call Me Maybe_ I made a joke about Ozpin's accent when saying "ménage à trois". Valisc uses the outdated English spelling of [ʃ], as in "Ænglisc". By canon-era, nearly everyone in major cities grew up properly bilingual in Valisc even outside of the Kingdom of Vale, as it was the main language of instruction, and several minority languages have been critically endangered and even lost to the normalization of Valisc, edging out other languages spoken at home and among the community. But now, quite soon after the Great War still, and not long after most of the educational reforms took place, it's not so simple as that, as especially one's parents may well not speak _any_ Valisc, and many Atlesian and Mistrali schools minimized Valisc instruction out of… understandable stubbornness. 
> 
> Additionally, we've now seen some examples of sound changes over the course of millennia! They've been kept relatively conservative for the sake of recognition.


End file.
